Chinese Almanac
My father lives by the Chinese Almanac (通勝) – it tells fortunes. Like when might be a good day to marry your lover or move house or landscape a garden. Me, I have no truck with that kind of hocus-pocus. Keep it simple. Two rules: you don’t turn down food; you stay the fuck out...
Premontions
When I was young, a remarkable woman lived in the village where I grew up. Her name was Frida Andersson. Frida lived alone in a cottage by herself but she had a daughter and a grandchild in the city. Sometimes in summer they would come to visit, but as Frida grew more and more peculiar,...
Chigozie Obioma: Tangled lines
Told from the point of view of Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, Chigozie Obioma’s powerful debut The Fishermen is the story of a childhood in 1990s Nigeria. When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the boys take advantage of his absence to skip school and go fishing. At the...
Here be sea monsters
In the year 1560, near the island of Mannar on the west coast of what was then Ceylon, a group of Dutch fishermen caught seven mermaids and seven tritons. By some marvellous chance, the personal physician to the Viceroy of Goa was on board the vessel at the time of their capture, and he dissected...
